Please! Find a Bathroom!

What do you do if people driving down your street in front of your house threw trash possibly containing human waste in and around your neighborhood? It has been a burning question of mine for quite some time now.  First thing is to try and raise some awareness.  Bring it to attention to those committing the offense.

Living live three steps off a U. S. highway, I am blessed with beautiful, enormous 360 degree vistas. My husband and I have our very own little house on the prairie.  After 8 years one detail has marred the joy of it all.  You see, it is not the presence of the road but some habits of  people traveling on it. Them and their inability to find a place to relieve their human needs. Didn't you ever learn to go use a bathroom before you start out on a trip?  I got it said often enough. Even riding on Greyhound they made it a point to let you know when to get off for personal needs.

I try to get out and pick up cans and such, my grandson helps and we take aluminum for recycling.  A few bucks here and there.  We pick some trash but do not pick up any shopping bags or plastic bottles.  They have been used as road-side (or on the fly) toilet solutions and flung out into the night, or an opportune time during the day.  Colorado fines $1,000 for littering but how to catch an offender? I am open to suggestions.

I grew up during a time there were Public Service Announcements, you know, the early 1970's. Keep America Beautiful, remember anyone?  I was hugely impressed with the images of Iron Eyes Cody with a tear rolling down his face in response to the serious amount of roadside trash and industrial dumping and just plain ruining the very thing that gives life, water and land.

Now, don't get the idea I have any problem with tourism, I do not.  I was married to a one time trucker (divorce was inevitable when I found out we were rednecks) and know them in general to be a stubborn lot but they do a great service in their jobs, people need their commerce. Commuters emergencies happen but try going to the bathroom before you start out for your commute! Highway travelers of all kinds, must you deface my property in the process of you getting to where you need?  Potentially threaten loss to my neighbor if he loses a cow to problems from eating garbage?

The human waste thing just has to stop, really, it is plain unsanitary.  My grandson plays out in my front yard! The plastic bottles full of pee lay and degrade in the sun into alien looking things. Sure, stop along the road to take in the view, just watch your step, yes might be snakes but there might be a plastic pop bottle full of urine as well. We have mowing along side of the road so plastic bottles get shredded and they drain, still gross. There are shredded tin or aluminum cans and are a danger. They are razor sharp, then there is the glass problem, people make gross time capsules of what they did on their road trip if they didn't shatter. People in pick-up trucks with open beds; the loose trash you threw in back is now in my front yard.  Two words:  Garbage bag!  Further simple instructions; place in proper trash receptacle!  A U.S. highway isn't a dump site. We have the best and the biggest highway system on the planet, show some respect.